Abdul Rashid
Food safety has always made headlines in the UAE, JohnsonDiversey Consulting keeping the topic vibrant and alive in the eyes of the public. A glance at the news stories such as Inspectors on high alert over tainted foodstuffs,’ Some restaurant workers pose grave health risks,‘Food poisoning cases drive Dubai to raise safety awareness,’ ‘Dubai restaurants advised to improve hygiene standards,’Inspectors fail half of Sharjah’s restaurants,’ points to the obvious: a good culture of food safety enforcement in the UAE.
Regional Director of JohnsonDiversey
Consulting
According to a 2003 survey report, there are 130 food processing facilities, 1500 restaurants, approximately 270 5 star hotels, 3,000 convenience stores, 900 grocery stores, 450 supermarkets, 226 gas marts, and 45 hypermarkets in the UAE, and a sizeable number of food import, export and reexport businesses as well as businesses involved in agriculture, livestock and fisheries all of which require a stringent focus on hygiene and food safety. The country also imports food from more than 90 different countries, making it mandatory to enforce strict food import laws as well.
Dubai leading the restThe government of Dubai has always shown a proactive approach towards food safety, in fact, as early as the 90s. According to Abdul Rashid,regional director of JohnsonDiversey Consulting, Middle East and Africa who headed Dubai Municipality’s Food Safety Unit in 1991, Dubai had a team of over 50 food inspectors employed for the inspection of food premises, in addition to import and export inspectors to inspect food items coming into the market.
“With an adequately staffed team and much fewer food premises as compared to today’s explosive situation, it was possible to carry out regular monthly inspections of all food premises every year,” says Rashid. The inspection regime prevalent in the early 90s in Dubai was in striking contrast to the inspection regime in the UK in the late 80s, where owners of food businesses would be lucky to get audited once a year due to the high number of premises to be inspected and the corresponding lack of staff resources. In fact, small restaurants would get their turn to be audited once every 2-3 years, says Rashid who was deployed as a food inspector in the UK in 1987.
Although the legislature for food safety in the UK has been in implementation longer than the GCC, lack of resources is very much evident in terms of shortage of food inspectors. However, the focus in Europe is on business owners managing their own risks through the implementation of food management programs overseen by quality assurance managers and hygiene managers. “By using a carrot and stick approach, businesses are encouraged to manage their own risks thereby limiting the need for external audits by food inspectors, yet, if the requirements are not met, the fines are much higher than they were ten years ago,” informs Rashid.While appreciating the efforts made by the government of Dubai towards food safety, Abdul Rashid identifies Singapore as the only other country with a stricter compliance in terms of hygiene requirements and deployment of human resources as inspectors. “Singapore has always had a very good focus on food safety and it is probably the number one in the world in terms of focused education and resource availability. Dubai can be rated amongst the top three if not number two in terms of inspectors available to do the audits.”
However, while there has been a tremendous increase in the number of food premises in Dubai over the last eight years, the number of food inspectors has not increased correspondingly due to cost factors. Notwithstanding this, care has been taken to combat the growth and yet maintain control over the situation.
Making businesses self sufficient
The Dubai Municipality has adopted a strategy whereby food safety is looked at on a priority basis. “If the risk potential from any food business is high, then it is looked at often and monitored closely.” This is generally the case with businesses that do not have their own internal food safety control mechanism in place and need the help of external enforcement authorities such as the municipality to draw the attention of the business owners towards risk factors which will eventually compromise food safety.
According to Abdul Rashid, the Dubai Municipality has achieved its aim of making businesses realize and control their own risks and hence meet the legal requirements of food safety. The HACCP certification which was initially mandatory only for food manufacturing units exporting to European markets in the late 90s was later on made mandatory for all 5 and 4 star hotels under a 5-year plan.
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“I would say that majority of hotels in Dubai are HACCP certified so the municipality has achieved that objective, which leaves inspectors free to focus their attention on the retail sector, smaller restaurants, cafeterias and hotels with a 3, 2 and 1 star rating to ensure that they reach the level of meeting legal requirements.
“If a business is doing well with the internal procedures and controls in place and the risks are minimized due to the efforts of professionally trained people who can implement food safety management systems like HACCP, food inspectors are free to focus on areas where there are potentially higher risks,” says Rashid.
The professionalism in 5 star hotels towards food safety is much higher than other lesser rated hotels which means that risks are managed well.
Most of the major hotels and food manufacturing companies have hygiene officers/managers who manage HACCP programs and food safety risks. This is quite different from the scenario ten years ago, says Rashid, where the executive chef or the food and beverage manager was responsible for food safety and to see that the establishment met with the municipality requirements.
While it is not mandatory for any establishment to have a hygiene manager on the payroll, most 5 star hotels and food manufacturing units realize that it is more appropriate to have a person whose area of responsibility is solely to manage food safety, rather than suffer the negative impact of food risks on the business.
The hygiene officer would ideally have a microbiological/food science background and his knowledge competency would encompass catering and cooking operations as well, to be able to manage risks from the time the raw material is received in the hotel through to storage, preparation and final serving of the food to the customer.
The impact of what Dubai has achieved in terms of food safety is also evident across the GCC, according to Rashid. Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar are gearing up to make HACCP certification mandatory in their food industries. Saudi Arabia will not renew the license for a food business unless the business is HACCP certified, the same as Dubai has been doing for the last 5 to 6 years. Qatar is developing very quickly along similar lines, having started with recommending HACCP certification for hotels before making it a legal requirement. Oman also has a program in place where all food handlers are required to be trained in food safety. Within the UAE, the smaller emirates of Ajman, Ras Al Khaimah and Umm Ul Quwain, also have approved companies that can provide training and consulting for food businesses within the emirates. “It is just a matter of time before food businesses will be asked to implement HACCP just like Dubai and Abu Dhabi.”
“The GCC as a region is very focused on food safety and hygiene as there are many food businesses exporting food to European markets. In addition, the region is actively diversifying into tourism and an internationally acceptable level of hygiene and food safety goes a long way in attracting tourists,” says Rashid.
HACCP – minimizing risk
To achieve HACCP implementation in their establishments, businesses can enlist the help of training and consulting companies such as JohnsonDiversey Consulting. Experts from JohnsonDiversey Consulting initially perform a gap assessment audit, to understand existing procedures within a company and what changes need to be implemented before the HACCP program can be embarked upon. Changes suggested to close the gap could be good hygiene practices, structural changes, operational changes, etc.The HACCP implementation plan is led through a series of seven steps while considering the entire operation, from receiving point till the time the food is served. A HACCP team is formed, consisting of the executive chef, hygiene manager, and key people from different departments like training, delivery, storage, and engineering. The team is then trained to understand the importance of food safety and basic principles of HACCP.
The engineering department is also included in the HACCP program as they are mostly involved in monitoring the temperature control of freezers and refrigerators. “They need to understand how their responsibilities will impact food safety and kitchen operations.”
A HACCP plan is then put into place following a HCCAP analysis to see how to minimize/eliminate risks by looking at each procedure for hazards and putting in a control mechanism. Every procedure has certain parameters by which it is checked. For instance, food received by the hotel should not be received at the same time as chemicals to avoid cross contamination, etc.
“The plan suggests a corrective procedure to put an operation back in control if something goes wrong as well as chalks out parameters to monitor procedures,” says Rashid. The core risk management is the same for all types of cuisines as food risks are categorized according to the food groups that give rise to risks, such as red meat, poultry, sea food bakery items, fresh green vegetables, fruits, etc. that manage about 80 percent of risks while the remaining 20 percent are managed during the actual food preparation process.
“The internal audit allows us to review the HACCP plan and based on the documents and the feedback from the staff, we come to know of challenges within the operation which have to be addressed. This allows us to implement changes and run the system for another month, thus fine tuning the system further to pass another internal audit.”
The hotel establishment is then ready for the final audit by a third party HACCP certifying company which furnishes it with a HACCP certificate as per the municipality certification requirement.
According to Abdul Rashid, the Dubai Municipality has achieved its aim of making hotels and food manufacturing companies manage their own risks as all 4 and 5 star hotels in Dubai have been accredited with the HACCP certification.
A step ahead is the ISO 22000 food safety management certification program which allows food establishments to integrate different existing ISO management systems like ISO 9001, 9002, and 14001 as well as HACCP into one system that meets the Dubai Municipality’s legal requirement of HACCP as well as allows the hotel to have an ISO managed program.
“Though not a legal requirement at the moment, the ISO 22000 food standard will probably be the best option for food business,” says Rashid, while stating that only one hotel in the UAE and another in Oman has been accredited with the ISO 22000 certification so far.
Getting a grip on the retail sector
While the “carrot approach” to empower businesses to manage their own risks has seemed to work well for 5 and 4 star hotels, the enforcement authorities now have a major challenge in getting the UAE’s vast retail food sector to manage risks within the industry. The same applies to 3, 2 and 1 star hotels, restaurants and eateries, which would require continued support from the food inspectors due to lack of in-house knowledge within their own premises.“JohnsonDiversey would be happy to assist food businesses in the retail sector and smaller hotels and restaurants to not only meet the legal requirements but become proactive and stay ahead of legal requirements by managing their own risks.”
However, within the retail sector, some businesses like the McDonald’s international chain of restaurants have their own internal controls to meet food safety and quality assurance requirements.
While the enforcement authorities are doing their best in propagating food safety, there is a major challenge that exists right across the Middle East that can hinder the retail sector from achieving total success, i.e. lack of competence and skills in food handlers.
